Coffee Break with Game Changers

On March 1st at 11:00 EST, I will be participating on a Coffee Break with Game Changers show hosted by Bonnie D. Graham. An abstract for the show can be found below. You can listen Live or On-Demand, typically two hours after the show.

On November 30th, I had the pleasure of participating in another Game Changers show. I was joined by Futurist Gerd Leonhard and SAP Innovation executive Timo Elliott. The show was expertly moderated by Bonnie D. Graham, starting with her positioning of the topic: “Impossible is not a fact. It is an opinion” (Muhammad Ali). A unique clustering of inventions in the century after the U.S. Civil War improved the American and European standard of living – human well-being – more than any period before or after, with advances in everything from food and energy to health and work. Can our current innovation explosion have a similar impact despite unintended consequences?

I participated in a radio show yesterday brought to you by Coffee Break with Game Changers. The show was hosted by Bonnie D. Graham and is now available on-demand here. When asked about a leadership trait required to effectively navigate our exponential future, I echoed something I have positioned many times via this Blog: Connecting Dots. The speed dimension that has accelerated our pace will put those dots in constant motion – so it’s a continuous state of connecting that makes this more challenging than our forward looking efforts of the past. The foundation for this argument was positioned in my post describing how Disruptive Power Lies at the Intersections. This visual from that post leverages my anchor visual on our emerging future.

I enjoyed participating in another episode of Coffee Break with Game-Changers this morning. The show’s title was: The Digital Economy is about to get more connected: The Rising Billions. I hope you get the chance to listen to the rebroadcast. The show was expertly moderated by Bonnie D. Graham, and my fellow panelists included Dennison DeGregor, the Worldwide Group Executive for CX Services at HP, and Paul Donovan, Senior Director in Solution Management at SAP.

The show abstract: According to Peter Diamandis of Singularity University, the most dramatic (positive) change in our global economy is about to occur between 2016 and 2020. He says that 3 to 5 billion new consumers, who have never purchased anything, never uploaded anything and never invented and sold anything, are about to come online and provide a mega-surge to the global economy. He calls this group the “Rising Billions.”

Technology giants like Google, Facebook, and SpaceX are all working hard to make this happen, and when it does, connectedness will take on new meaning. What will it mean to have a connected business in 2020? Now is the time for your company to begin addressing the fast-approaching era of hyper-connectivity in your business networks and turn it into sustainable growth opportunities. If you thought you were challenged to create the “The Internet of Me” today, that challenge is about to get much more complex.

I have had the ongoing pleasure of participating in SAP’s Coffee Break with Game Changers radio program, the most recent one on August 26th. I was joined by Dennis DeGregor, Worldwide Group Executive for customer experience services at HP, and Drew Hofler Sr. Director, Solutions Marketing, Ariba network and Financial Solutions. The show was titled “Business Networks and the Digital Economy: Ready for Digital Humanism?” and was expertly moderated by Bonnie D. Graham.

The episode description: What does it really mean for you to have a connected business? Analysts estimate that by 2020, social networks will connect 2.5 billion people, the number of connected devices will total 75 billion, and the volume of global business trade between connected businesses will reach $65 trillion. As we move to an era of true hyper-connectivity in our digital economy, how can your company turn these challenges and your business networks into sustainable profitable opportunities?

Bonnie kicks off each show by analyzing a quote provided by each panelist. The following are our quotes and their relevance to the topic:

On a recent Radio Program focused on the future of business, Gray Scott introduced another future scenario. He called it the empowerment economy, and he described it this way:

He sees the past in three stages: 1) companies were in the business of providing supplies and core objects 2) we moved away from that to a convenience economy where we make it convenient for you to get what you need 3) now we are moving to the empowerment economy. It’s no longer about providing an object or convenience; it’s about giving them the power to supply themselves. Gray does not believe corporations understand this. Google and Uber get this circular idea of empowering people, which he believes is the future of business. The companies that embrace this empowerment economy are the companies that are going to succeed.

Those are his words direct from the radio program referenced above. So we add empowerment economy to the growing list of future scenarios. Thanks Gray.